Surgery Update WTF

     Yeah so I would love to say I just haven't been posting everything because of my recovery, but that just isn't the case.  So when I last posted it was the start to the Labor Day weekend and I was told by the doctor's nurse that he would contact the insurance company Tuesday and she would call me with an update.  Tuesday came and by late afternoon I hadn't heard anything, so I called them.  After being put on hold for several minutes I was informed that the doctor would be calling tomorrow, the day before the surgery, because he wasn't in the office today.   I thought, "Really?!, but ok."

     The next morning I wake up and anxiously awaited the verdict.  I received the call around 10ish letting me know that the surgery has been canceled.  The nurse stated that the insurance company would not budge on their position that this surgery is exploratory and that with a procedure such as this requires medication, rest and alternative treatments before they will authorize the surgery.

     Of course it goes without saying, but I will anyway, that I was SUPER PISSED and extremely disappointed.  I proceeded to call my insurance company and vent my frustrations, which got me passed along from one person to another who could supposedly help me, I was finally transferred to a voicemail where I left all my info while thinking there is no way in hell anyone will call me back.  Little did I know that I would get a call back several hours later.  The conversation with the nurse for their medical staff, basically went back and forth just like a tennis match.  I could tell she was getting a pissed off with me because I wouldn't give in and kept on till after 20 plus minutes she finally said what the real reason they denied it.  Basically, Anthem has different procedures that no mater what have a list of things that must be tried before a surgical option will be explored.  Them denying my surgery wasn't because their doctor disagreed with my doctor its because of their policy and my surgery fit this bullshit policy.  So instead of doing what is medically necessary their policy has me jumping through hoops till they say otherwise.  

     After the conversation with the insurance company I called the nurse at my doctor's office to let them know what the ins company had to say, and that is when things start to get a little "funny" for me.  The nurse says that she is calling in a prescription to my pharmacy and will be mailing me a prescription for physical therapy that she will mail me.  I hang up and call it a day and instead of going back to work for the week, I decided to use the rest of the week to spend time with my wife, my family who were in town and for myself to just relax and decompress.  Friday my wife surprised me with a tattoo appointment because she wanted something to go right for me this week.  Only those that have tattoos and really enjoy the act of getting one just as much as the artwork involved know what I am talking about when I say that it was just the thing I needed to relieve some stress.  Wow did I feel so much better after we were all done. 

     So, fast forward a few days and this is where my head is at.

     I am beginning to think my doctor and his staff don't know what the fuck they are doing.  Sunday, a full four days after the nurse stated she was calling in my script, I stopped by the pharmacy and to my surprise there was no prescription waiting for me.  I thought to myself, maybe she meant she was mailing the script along with the PT prescription.  When Wednesday came and still nothing I decided to see just what the hell is going on.  I had to return the recovery medical supplies that I had received prior to my surgery that I wrote about here.  

     The medical supply company is located in the same office as the doctor and since I still haven't received my prescriptions for my meds and PT I thought I would kill two birds with one stone while I was there.  When I asked them about the medication and PT no one seemed to know what I was talking about.  The nurse I spoke with asked me to sit and wait till the doctor got out of a consultation so she could talk with him.  I was close enough to them that I was able to listen in on some of their conversation and when she asked him about the medication he said I don't care whatever we usually give.  After the doctor walked away, she called me back over to get everything taken care of.  After the nurse asked me what pharmacy I wanted the meds called into, she still ended up calling them into the wrong place.  I mean come on Dean, cut her a little slack, Right Aid and Walgreen's sounds exactly a like.  But I digress.  Oh, and the nurse on the phone from last week, the one that was taking care of all this, told me the insurance company needed me to have PT for 3 months and Wednesday the doctor only prescribed 6 weeks of physical therapy. WTF!  Doesn't anyone know what is going on?

     After today, I am on the fence about seeking a 2nd opinion and wondering if some of what the insurance company was blaming on the doctor was, in fact, true.

Taking It To The Next Level

     Just wanted to throw out a quick update on my injury and the road to recovery.  Last week, Alisha, my physical therapist asked me to take a complete week off from all activity and we would reevaluate on Wednesday.  During my rest I put myself on an ibuprofen regimen and a icing routine.  Slowly throughout the week the pain started to subside and I was starting to get a positive feeling that this may be all I needed, that is till Wednesday.

     I woke up Wednesday and the pain and aching had returned in full force and believe it or not all I could do was smile, shake my head and laugh.  I sent Alisha an email letting her know of my progress and regress for the week.  She felt it was time to take it to the next level and see a specialist.  I really had no idea what to do or who to see on, so Alisha recommended a doctor that is top notch in his field here in Toledo.  Alisha has been so great through my previous injury recovery and now this situation that I fully trust her opinion and who she recommends I see.  She got me his contact info and I called for an appointment.     This coming Wednesday I'll be having my initial evaluation and an x-ray, so hopefully I'll have an answer to my problem or at the very least have it narrowed down to a short list of possible issues.

     If you wonder how I am able to keep my spirits up during this situation, well its been a little rough but Jedi has been keeping me entertained!

   
     I am anxious to see what he has to say, but I fear that this my drag on for a couple of weeks before, one, I have a diagnosis, and two, know if I have to have surgery or not.  So for now, the goal is to get healthy enough to run again, while I hope and pray that I'll be able to run the Detroit Marathon in three and a half months!

GCM Owens Corning Half Marathon Training Week 5

    

     This week has been a bit a of a struggle for me mentally and physically.  I keep trying to get back to my pre-marathon form with my dedication and my nutrition, but sadly I keep failing myself.  Last week was a little rough and I told myself it is time to make a change, and when I did it lasted a couple of days and petered off.  I think a lot has to do with my current frame of mind.  I keep feeling like I don't have enough time in the day to get everything I either need and/or want to accomplish.  You would think with the weather changing I would be in better spirits and ready to get out and run, but lately that hasn't been the case.  Plus as you may have read from my Thursday post my food intake has become a bit of a problem as well.  I don't want to say I feel depressed because at the end of the day I don't have any real problems that warrant me feeling depressed, but I just kind of do.  For example I woke up early to get my workout in the other day and I looked for every excuse to skip it and go back to bed, or I would tell myself I can get it in after work and by the time I get home that is the last fucking thing I want to do.  I just can't seem to get myself on a schedule that agrees with me and it is aggravating the shit out of me.

 

     Back in the day when I was fat overweight Dean I would try to lose weight and get in shape, and when I'd get started I would be totally focused and disciplined to my goals.  Then after a month or two in I would get sick or something would come up that would sideline me for a short time and I would lose all focus.  I would start to pull the same crap that is happening to me now.  This was my first thought is because I was sidelined for so long due to my injury, which makes total sense, but I worked so hard to get through therapy, so what is the issue?  To answer my own question, I think my priorities and my schedule or lack of a schedule is all out of whack.  My Therapist wrote me a great training plan for the GCM Owens Corning Half Marathon, but I have failed to properly organize it so it fits in with my work schedule.  I really need to sit down and take some time to map out a schedule to get the second half of my training program prioritized along with my other interests.  I mean I only have a little over 40 days till I run the Owens Corning Half Marathon at the Glass City Marathon.  So maybe going back and reviewing the goals I set for this year will get me inspired to bring back pre-marathon Dean.

     So I guess you were wondering when I was going to actually talk about my training for the week.  I am sure you can tell by the picture above and my long preamble above that, that should tell you this week wasn't that great.  I only got 3 days of running in, one cross training day, one strength day and zero yoga.  To most that might sound like I got a lot done, and maybe I am being to hard on myself, but I skipped part or all of my workout on 3 of the 4 days I had something scheduled.  

     My tempo run on Tuesday went fine, but my long run on Thursday could have been better if my legs were not so tired from my strength training on Wednesday.  I started to have some mild knee pain from my IT band in the last two miles and my hamstrings were sore for a couple of days after that.  You can read more about that run here.  Because I skipped Friday and Saturday's workouts I told myself that there would be no excuses, just running.  I had to work so I couldn't do my interval and hill workout at the gym so I ran the intervals on the bike path and used a highway overpass for my hill workout.  I decided to take the long way back to the house and throw in a easy tempo run to do it. Here is a selfie from high above the world on a midwest mountain!

     I saw this quote today and I think it says exactly what I needed to hear right now!

  

1000 Miles and Depressed

     Today's run was my first back in two weeks due to my continuous IT Band issues.  I went out without using the IT band isolator strap.  My ultimate goal is to get back to original form so I wanted to see how I would do without it.  I headed out keeping my pace quite slow and just trying to concentrate on my form.  Somewhere around the mile and a half mark I was starting to feel the tightness in my knee with some minor pain.  I hit the turnaround and ended up stopping so I could stretch out the IT band.  I walked for maybe 20 yards and then got back to it with no problems.  As I suspected The pain crept back and I ended up stopping again to stretch things out and walk it out.  Again I was pain free for a little while, but like I was expecting, pain came back.  once I hit the 3 mile mark I gave up and walked the last mile home.

     When I got home I was feeling frustrated and depressed, and realized I was only 1.1 miles away from hitting the 1000mile mark for the year.  I finished my stretches and thought to myself, I am not going to run again for the rest of the year so fuck it I am gonna go out and at least hit the millennium mark for the year.  I geared up and headed down the bike trail for a half mile and turned around to head back.  The whole time I was thinking this a stupid idea to continue to run, but I wanted a victory of some kind today.

  
     Now where do I go from here.  I am officially done for the year.  I have a tattoo apt in a couple of days and combine that with the knee issues I am just going to hang up the shoes till January.  I am also going to seek professional help in the form of a sports physical therapist.  I found out today that in Ohio you don't have to see and get a doctor's note before you can see a SPT, you can go directly to them.  I am going to contact a couple of places and see what I need to do to get started.

Wednesday Weigh In

      Sorry for the lack of posts the last week or so.  My intentions with this blog was to talk about my ups and downs with my running and weight loss, but both of those have seemed to have stalled for now, which has left me with little to say. 

     Today marks ten straight days without a run and it has been awfully hard to wake up every day and not go for a run.  Especially when that's all you have been doing for the past two years.  The hard part with this injury is that it only really hurts when I am running or just finished running.  Right now my knee feels great, but unless I run I won't know for sure and I can't heal the injury without restraining from running.  Its a frustrating challenge to say the least. 
     
     I have to say though, I have been quite impressed with myself sticking to my homemade workout routine.  Every time I say to myself I think I'll just skip it tonight I remind myself this is all I got and I need to continue till I can get back to running full time.  Also, it is the only stress reliever I have and right now boy do I need it.  Work has been super crazy.  For reasons I am not going to go into we had to let one of our employees go and I am the only other person on staff that has the skills and abilities to do the job he was performing, so not only am I doing all my duties I have a whole second job to accomplish as well.  My boss has been great, understanding and thankful for my willingness to step in and do what is needed for the company, but I would be lying if I said I wasn't a little stressed out.  

     Sunday will be the 14th day of my non running recovery and I think I am going to lace up the shoes and head out for a short two mile run.  Nothing fast, just let my body tell me how fast to go.  Then I'll take another week or so off and continue the leg strengthening exercises.  I am scheduled to get tattooed next Wednesday and running with a fresh tat on your leg doesn't go very well together.  I'll let the tat heal up and then try another two mile run and see how things progress from there.

     Now for the weigh in.  I was able to have a nice little victory this morning with the scale.  I managed to squeeze out another half pound, which I was quite happy with.  With today's number that puts me only two freaking pounds away from goal!  It seems like such a long journey to get to this point, but am I glad I started it.   

12/10/14 official weigh in

175 lbs

Change: -.5 lbs

Total loss from heaviest: 142 lbs

Current BMI: 27.4 (overweight)

Change: -.1

I am in I.T. Band Hell

     Those of you that have suffered from I.T. Band syndrome know exactly what I mean when I say I am in I.T. band hell.  Just when I think things are on the up and up, I have a set back and it throws me into a depressed state.  

     

     I know that I have to get all my muscles around my IT band stronger and stretch the ITB out in order to win this battle, but there are so many opinions and routines I haven't been able to settle on just one.  I was trying a hodgepodge of different things and I don't think I was really making any head way so I decided I needed to settle on just one.  I finally settled on a stretching and strengthening program from a guy on YouTube that suffered from ITB issues and put up a video of his routine that solved his problems, so for the past couple of days I have been trying to follow it.  Basically I perform side leg lifts and holds, single leg raises and holds, a leg lift with a horizontal swing out, mini single leg dips, a cross leg IT band stretch and a bent knee IT band stretch.  I am going to give this routine about two weeks and see if it is making any improvement to my situation.  I don't really want to get into promoting it if it doesn't work so until I get a couple of weeks in and see how I am doing before I give out all the details.

     

     I read about a compression strap that can help with ITBS, and it has helped me so far, at least on short runs, is the Pro Tech IT Band Compression Wrap.  The wrap is made up of mostly neoprene and has two velcro attaching points.  It has a small square of padding that when wrapped and compressed to the leg will isolate the IT band and keep it from moving across the knee and becoming irritated.  I have used it on three runs so far and has worked wonderfully until today's run.  The first two runs were 4 milers and I had no issues, today's was 6 miles and once I hit mile five the pain slowly came back and I had to shut it down at mile six.  This product seems to work, at least for me in short mileage situations so far.  I will keep using it and give a follow up review after a few more runs.  I picked it up online for around $25 bucks (including shipping).

And no that's not my leg :)

  
     I am not ready to give my full review and full endorsement of my new Altra Paradigms, but after almost 12 miles I am loving them.  The wide toe box is AWESOME!  It gives my feet room to breathe and the zero drop platform allows me to feel like I am running on my feet not on my shoes, if that makes any sense.

     After I uploaded my run info from my Garmin I noticed another reason why I keep having these set backs with my injury and it boils down to me over doing it.  I took a week off from doing any running and the next week back I did over 17 miles.  The last six weeks have been back and forth like that and that cannot be a recipe for success.  I think I will take this next week completely off followed by the next three weeks of 5, 8 and 11 total miles.  Hopefully with the slow easy build up and the stretch and strengthening routine I can kick this crap and get back to enjoying my runs.

The Self Loathing Ramblings of a Frustrated Runner

     When I started running I had no thoughts of running races or setting personal records (PR) all I was trying to do was lose the weight.  As my mileage increased and my per mile times decreased, the idea of actually running a race seemed like the thing to do.  That first year I tried to run every race I could get my hands on.  I was constantly scouring the internet looking for races that I could fit into my schedule, which I know was annoying Mandy quit a bit.  This past summer I put all my training eggs into one basket for the marathon and totally skipped out on a bunch of other smaller local races that I did last year.  I had planned on doing a 10K right in the middle of my training, but thanks to my knee pain I was having at the time, I skipped the race so I could continue to rest my knee.  In fact if it wasn’t for my sister being involved with that 5K a couple of weeks before the marathon, I wouldn’t have even done it.  I put all my focus and energy into preparing for the marathon which is why, I believe, I had such a great race day experience.  I loved every minute of that race and to be quite honest I can’t wait to do another one, but every since that race my running life has been a frustrating chain of events. 

    

     First I have pain in my ankle, then my knee pain comes back while running anything longer than 2-3 miles at a time.  I keep telling myself that I just didn’t let my body heal up enough after the marathon, so I gave myself almost two weeks worth of time to rest and what happens my first run back, freaking knee pain.  Because of this issue, I have missed out on a half marathon I wanted to do and at this point there is know way I am running the local turkey trot on Thanksgiving.  It has really thrown me into a funk right now, mostly because I don’t know what to do.  I know it is my IT band acting up again and I have read every little thing on this issue and no matter what I try nothing seems to work.  Rest seems to be the number one prescribed treatment, but I have read so many stories about people who have rested for 6 months and on their first run back the pain returns.  I have been icing, foam rolling, stretching and no matter what I run two to three miles and the pain returns.

      

     This shit is so frustrating because all I want to do is run.  I keep thinking do I really need to worry about getting faster and setting new PRs?  The primary reason I fell in love with running is because it worked so well in aiding my weight loss.  I would not be anywhere near where I am at with my weight loss if I couldn’t run, that I am sure of.  The thing that I can’t stand is that I can’t run long distances right now, even if I slowed down to a turtle’s pace I would still have pain after a couple miles and long distance is what I am into right now.  Hell I even started researching ultra marathons, but that is a freaking pipe dream with this knee pain.  I had been thinking hard these past couple of weeks on my goals for 2015, I have even started writing about them and was planning on posting it this week, but at this point I don’t even know if consistent running is in my future little lone setting a pretty aggressive time or distance goal.  If I can get this knee pain solved, I think running and having fun doing it will end up being my goal for 2015.  Maybe get back to my attitude from 2013, were I was running any race I can get my hands on. 

      

      A couple of things I have read that can cause IT band syndrome is weak quads and core, shoes and running form.  With this in mind I have started a body weight exercise routine that will hopefully help my entire body get stronger.  I am also going to go this week and look into a new pair of shoes.  I have been hearing great things about Altra brand shoes helping to correct and promote good running form with their zero drop design, so I am seriously considering  going them a try as well.  The last thing I am going to do after I give myself a little more rest is keep my runs short, 2-3 miles max.  I think if I keep my IT band from getting irritated while getting stronger eventually I will be able to get back to long distances again.  At least I hope so, I got a lot of important races coming up in April and early May.